I'm still sticking to my General wanting the war over angle and using weapons to draw international community in was surest method - shame not enough breadcrumbs were laid to attribute blame at assad

What "General"?

If you think a Syrian military General wants to draw the U.S. into the conflict in such a way as to bring the war to a close, then I think you are mistaken. The Syrian Government is not simply going to surrender after a couple of U.S. bombs fall.

Significant U.S. involvement (an attempt to actually bring the war to a close or ensure victory by the opposition), would likely include destruction of the Syrian government's key facilities and communication resources, destruction of the Syrian military's headquarters, command, control, communications, and intelligence resources, destruction of the Syrian military's entire Air Defense apparatus, destruction of the Syrian military's aircraft and airfields, destruction of the Syrian military's logistics centers (fuel depots, ammunition dumps, maintenance depots, parts warehouses, transportation assets, etc.), and destruction of the Syrian military's active heavy weapons (tanks, artillery, rocket launchers, mechanized infantry vehicles, etc.).

This would then allow the various rebel forces, which are not well disciplined or controlled, to over-run the remaining Syrian military forces (who would be clueless about what's going on, running out of ammunition, food, medical supplies, etc.). They would not be well-treated -- recall the video of one of the Islamist rebels cutting out and eating the heart of a dead Syrian soldier.

No Syrian General Officer would be foolish enough to think that bringing the U.S. into things would "stop the war". They know it means the destruction of their military and probable death for themselves, either in an explosion from above, at the end of a FSA noose, or at the hands of barbarous, ululating, Salafists likely to torture them to death or tear them limb from limb.

Even if the U.S. only shows up and cowardly fires a few cruise missiles, in Bill Clinton style, it will probably mean losing some of the advantage the Syrian military has fought so hard to gain.

No, I'm confident, especially after learning that these chemicals (which have still not been identified by the UN) are being delivered by mortars (a weapon anybody can get and which many terrorist organizations have), that these attacks were carried out by one of the more rogue elements of the opposition seeking to draw the U.S. in to castrate the Syrian government and military for them, or by a foreign power (perhaps even the CIA or the French DGSE) trying to create an excuse for the U.S. to come in and level the playing field a bit.

While I don't personally object to the Obama Administration doing that (leveling the playing field a bit), I'm embarrassed that we would insult the intelligence of whole world by pretending that these chemical attacks were actually carried out by the Syrian military.

The brother of your CIA agent.
My angle is occams razor. Some convoluted conspiracy involving international spy agencies to fire off the correct compound mix that Syria has in such a way to lay the blame at Assads regime feet ALL under the noses of Russian intelligence (who will be there as well) ? MI6/CIA/DGSE might be good but equally so are the FIS (Moscow rules and all)

Maybe the Rebels launched them but then how did they get hold of the chemical weapons (Syria have always maintained they have them protected) AND are they the same grade/qual as the Syrian held munition?

A "General" or some army officer who has access to Syrian chemical using or passing on such weapons to the rebels is a simpler explanation_________________The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter
Great Britain is a republic, with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king

The brother of your CIA agent.
My angle is occams razor. Some convoluted conspiracy involving international spy agencies to fire off the correct compound mix that Syria has in such a way to lay the blame at Assads regime feet ALL under the noses of Russian intelligence (who will be there as well) ? MI6/CIA/DGSE might be good but equally so are the FIS (Moscow rules and all)

Maybe the Rebels launched them but then how did they get hold of the chemical weapons (Syria have always maintained they have them protected) AND are they the same grade/qual as the Syrian held munition?

A "General" or some army officer who has access to Syrian chemical using or passing on such weapons to the rebels is a simpler explanation

There are chemical weapons all over the middle east. Iraq had shitloads of them, Iran has shitloads of them, pretty much everybody has them. Lots of them has been lost control of and entered the black market over the years. What was used wasn't something complex like a potent nerve or blister agent. It seems to me it was a choking agent or a low-grade nerve/choking agent. People can make that shit in labs about as easily as cooking up meth -- it's not something hard like weaponizing anthrax, and it's not traceable in the same fashion either.

Even if it was a potent blister or nerve agent, that's what Saddam had shitloads of and had to get rid of before both invasions. Even at the time it was said it was being squirreled away across the border in Syria.

We haven't even been told yet what chemicals were used -- not even by the Obama Administration, which claims to have "incontrovertible evidence to be released soon [once we finish making it up]", even though the UN doesn't. And, we don't have the ability to go take a swab off the ground and make some kind of a conclusive match against a database of who has what (like we do with biological agents). Although, I fully expect that's the kind of crap we're going to hear.

Obama is politically smart, though. He doesn't want to get blamed like Bush, and he's been getting called out a lot lately for lying, so you can bet he's going to have his people try their damnedest to put the words into the mouth of the UN. So they're probably running a big con job as we speak, on the ground in Syria, using carefully placed evidence and very persuasive voices, to convince the UN inspectors they must blame Assad.

The brother of your CIA agent.
My angle is occams razor. Some convoluted conspiracy involving international spy agencies to fire off the correct compound mix that Syria has in such a way to lay the blame at Assads regime feet ALL under the noses of Russian intelligence (who will be there as well) ? MI6/CIA/DGSE might be good but equally so are the FIS (Moscow rules and all)

Maybe the Rebels launched them but then how did they get hold of the chemical weapons (Syria have always maintained they have them protected) AND are they the same grade/qual as the Syrian held munition?

A "General" or some army officer who has access to Syrian chemical using or passing on such weapons to the rebels is a simpler explanation

Sarin gas is not nuclear weaponry. A religious cult in Japan had it, how hard would it be for Al-Quaeda to get it, especially since it's a CIA asset to begin with? ^^_________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

The brother of your CIA agent.
My angle is occams razor. Some convoluted conspiracy involving international spy agencies to fire off the correct compound mix that Syria has in such a way to lay the blame at Assads regime feet ALL under the noses of Russian intelligence (who will be there as well) ? MI6/CIA/DGSE might be good but equally so are the FIS (Moscow rules and all)

Maybe the Rebels launched them but then how did they get hold of the chemical weapons (Syria have always maintained they have them protected) AND are they the same grade/qual as the Syrian held munition?

A "General" or some army officer who has access to Syrian chemical using or passing on such weapons to the rebels is a simpler explanation

Sarin gas is not nuclear weaponry. A religious cult in Japan had it, how hard would it be for Al-Quaeda to get it, especially since it's a CIA asset to begin with? ^^

That's what I've been saying all along. I see nothing in these chemical attacks to make me believe they were carried out by the Syrian military. From what I've seen the chemical employed was sarin, and it was delivered by mortar (according to the original eyewitnesses). Neither are anything special.

It's no secret how to make sarin, but what we're probably seeing is formerly Iraqi or Libyan chemicals. Saddam Hussein had a shitload of the stuff, and the Iraqis are the only military I know of that has ever actually employed it (both against Iranians and Kurds). Qaddafi also had a stockpile of the stuff -- originally 25 metric tons of sarin precursors and thousands of rounds. Qaddafi agreed to destroy this stuff after witnessing the downfall of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but was still in the process of destroying it when the Libyan civil war broke out. During that fiasco, the remaining 12 tons or so were reportedly still stockpiled in locations in the desert south of Tripoli.

The less ADD among us might remember we were very concerned about what would happen to these chemicals, about two years ago while we were helping Islamist terrorists to overthrow the government and abscond into the desert with entire arsenals of various types of weaponry (also including thousands of man-portable surface-to-air missile systems). I don't recall ever hearing anything about that chemical weapons stockpile being secured or destroyed.

If the Syrian military were going to employ chemical weapons, I can't imagine why they'd use mortars; they would use SCUD missiles for any deep attack (which is the preferred use of chemical weapons because their effects are so difficult to accurately target) or, for smaller attacks, they would use howitzers (which are more accurate, reliable, and longer-range) to avoid capture of the weapons, to ensure the rounds landed where they wanted them to land, and to keep their own forces safe from the effects. They wouldn't use un-guided rockets, as the U.N. have been led to believe, based on rocket fragments found in the area (which had been under heavy conventional shelling), and some of the rockets aren't even Syrian. Sarin itself is 1950s technology (if you don't count the Nazis possibly using it on the Eastern Front). The Syrians have other weapons besides sarin that would be more difficult to detect (quicker to act and to vanish).

More than anything, though, it just isn't believable that Assad would release chemical weapons -- the one highly publicized trigger for foreign intervention against him -- just as he had gained the upper hand in the war and just as UN chemical weapons observers arrived on the battlefield. In fact, it's quite absurd, whether the evidence was intended to make it look that way or not. It just wouldn't make sense.

We also know for a fact that the Syrian military had been consolidating and moving nearly all its chemical weapons to the rear, to get them away from the front and prevent any possibility of their capture or release by opposition forces.

Sorry, but I'm not buying any of this, and I'm dumbfounded that anybody is.

Last edited by Bones McCracker on Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:02 am; edited 1 time in total

The brother of your CIA agent.
My angle is occams razor. Some convoluted conspiracy involving international spy agencies to fire off the correct compound mix that Syria has in such a way to lay the blame at Assads regime feet ALL under the noses of Russian intelligence (who will be there as well) ? MI6/CIA/DGSE might be good but equally so are the FIS (Moscow rules and all)

Maybe the Rebels launched them but then how did they get hold of the chemical weapons (Syria have always maintained they have them protected) AND are they the same grade/qual as the Syrian held munition?

A "General" or some army officer who has access to Syrian chemical using or passing on such weapons to the rebels is a simpler explanation

Sarin gas is not nuclear weaponry. A religious cult in Japan had it, how hard would it be for Al-Quaeda to get it, especially since it's a CIA asset to begin with? ^^

That's what I've been saying all along. I see nothing in these chemical attacks to make me believe they were carried out by the Syrian military. From what I've seen the chemical employed was sarin, and it was delivered by mortar (according to the original eyewitnesses). Neither are anything special.

It's no secret how to make sarin, but what we're probably seeing is formerly Iraqi or Libyan chemicals. Saddam Hussein had a shitload of the stuff, and the Iraqis are the only military I know of that has ever actually employed it (both against Iranians and Kurds). Qaddafi also had a stockpile of the stuff -- originally 25 metric tons of sarin precursors and thousands of rounds. Qaddafi agreed to destroy this stuff after witnessing the downfall of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but was still in the process of destroying it when the Libyan civil war broke out. During that fiasco, the remaining 12 tons or so were reportedly still stockpiled in locations in the desert south of Tripoli.

The less ADD among us might remember we were very concerned about what would happen to these chemicals, about two years ago while we were helping Islamist terrorists to overthrow the government and abscond into the desert with entire arsenals of various types of weaponry (also including thousands of man-portable surface-to-air missile systems). I don't recall ever hearing anything about that chemical weapons stockpile being secured or destroyed.

If the Syrian military were going to employ chemical weapons, I can't imagine why they'd use mortars; they would use SCUD missiles for any deep attack (which is the preferred use of chemical weapons because their effects are so difficult to accurately target) or, for smaller attacks, they would use howitzers (which are more accurate, reliable, and longer-range) to avoid capture of the weapons, to ensure the rounds landed where they wanted them to land, and to keep their own forces safe from the effects. They wouldn't use un-guided rockets, as the U.N. have been led to believe, based on rocket fragments found in the area (which had been under heavy conventional shelling), and some of the rockets aren't even Syrian. Sarin itself is 1950s technology (if you don't count the Nazis possibly using it on the Eastern Front). The Syrians have other weapons besides sarin that would be more difficult to detect (quicker to act and to vanish).

More than anything, though, it just isn't believable that Assad would release chemical weapons -- the one highly publicized trigger for foreign intervention against him -- just as he had gained the upper hand in the war and just as UN chemical weapons observers arrived on the battlefield. In fact, it's quite absurd, whether the evidence was intended to make it look that way or not. It just wouldn't make sense.

We also know for a fact that the Syrian military had been consolidating and moving nearly all its chemical weapons to the rear, to get them away from the front and prevent any possibility of their capture or release by opposition forces.

Sorry, but I'm not buying any of this, and I'm dumbfounded that anybody is.

If the Syrian military were going to employ chemical weapons, I can't imagine why they'd use mortars; they would use SCUD missiles [...] or, for smaller attacks, they would use howitzers

The below is what makes the source of the attacks, at a minimum, unclear. If not for the below, one reason to use mortars would be to claim plausible deniability (based on my guess that the rebels do not have access to either SCUDs or howitzers. I haven't read much about their purported capabilities).

BoneKracker wrote:

More than anything, though, it just isn't believable that Assad would release chemical weapons -- the one highly publicized trigger for foreign intervention against him -- just as he had gained the upper hand in the war and just as UN chemical weapons observers arrived on the battlefield. In fact, it's quite absurd, whether the evidence was intended to make it look that way or not. It just wouldn't make sense.

We also know for a fact that the Syrian military had been consolidating and moving nearly all its chemical weapons to the rear, to get them away from the front and prevent any possibility of their capture or release by opposition forces.

Sorry, but I'm not buying any of this, and I'm dumbfounded that anybody is.

_________________Will today be the day rights are taken from The People?

And now that the Obama Administration has been humiliated by the Russians, who cock-blocked their WMD ploy, now Obama is having to resort to personally killing more bin Ladens to keep the people distracted from all his fail, broken promises, incompetence, authoritarian abuse of power and scandals.

SEALs assaulted a Somali compound this morning (although they apparently failed to achieve their objective of killing some dude and were driven off) and Delta Force snatched some Libyan man said to have been involved in an embassy bombing 15 years ago and whisked him off to Camp Null where he will, of course, not be subjected to "enhanced interrogation" because such detainees no longer have the rights and protections due all Prisoners of War, because that term isn't PC anymore (see the hand is quicker than the eye).

Meanwhile, a Syrian militant group linked to the U.S. (or more accurately, a certain three-letter acronym) has attacked a different Syrian militant group of the al Qaedist bent.

Note that perpetrating such acts of war in Somalia, Libya, Kenya, Yemen, Nigeria, Ethiopia, etc., in addition to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq does not constitute a "War on Terror", which we are not fighting, because we only now have "Overseas Contingency Operations".